The National Law Journal recently convened an online forum of educators and others interested in the future of law school and the legal profession. The forum is a must-read for anyone considering law school — both the main entries and the comments sections are filled with rich and provocative commentary. The forum starts here, in a post at the bottom of the page dated 10/27/11. To follow the debate properly, you should work your way backwards up the page and to page 2 and page 1 (it’s all in reverse chronological order, with no easy way to re-order it). You can also read a “highlights” version here, at least for now (law.com has an unfortunate habit of hiding their articles behind pay walls after a little time has elapsed).

There is broad consensus among the commentators that the practice of law and legal education are (or should be) undergoing major structural changes; the debate centers on how those changes will play out, and how law schools should adapt to best serve the profession. Make no mistake: these changes will affect the practice and study of law during your career. As you make decisions regarding whether and how to pursue a legal career, it’s critical that you take into account the likely changes, and the debates surrounding the future of the legal profession.

Alissa Leonard, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid,
Boston University School of Law
Wednesday, October 26th, 3:30 pm
W13 Machmer

This is an invaluable opportunity to get information about financial aid, loans, debt repayment options and scholarships from an expert.

The National Association for Legal Career Professionals (NALP) has issued its findings and analysis of employment trends for the law school class of 2010, and it’s almost all bad news. The annual NALP hiring report examines the employment status of law grads in February, nine months after graduation.

• “[A]t 87.6%, the overall employment rate for new law school graduates is the lowest it has been since 1996.”
• “[O]f those graduates for whom employment was known, only 68.4% obtained a job for which bar passage is required. This compares with 70.8% for the Class of 2009 and 74.7% for the Class of 2008 and is the lowest percentage NALP has ever measured.” (emphasis added)
• “[O]nly 71% of the jobs reported were both full-time and permanent. Overall, nearly 27% of all jobs taken by members of this class were classified as temporary . . .. Eleven percent of all jobs taken were classified as part-time [and] 8% of all jobs were both temporary and part-time.” (emphasis added)
• “[A] much higher percentage of this class reported that even though they were employed, they were still looking for work (23% reported that they were still seeking work even though employed, compared with 16% for the Class of 2008), suggesting that graduates took jobs they may not have been satisfied with simply to be able to earn some money to offset their living expenses and begin paying on their student debt.” (emphasis added)

(All quotes from NALP, Employment for the Class of 2010 — Selected Findings (PDF))

But wait, there’s more: AmLaw Daily reports that, according to data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the legal employment market continues to bleed jobs, losing 1,000 in May, and 2,700 since this time last year.

The bottom line remains the same: a law degree (and the time and money it takes to get one) does not guarantee you a job.  Moreover, the likely financial return on the significant initial investment in the degree (on average around $100,000 these days) does not make sense on a purely cost/benefit basis.  Now more than ever, it is critical that you explore the field in depth before deciding to apply to and attend law school, and make sure that you will love being a lawyer — enough to make the investment worth it. Don’t rush into law school on the assumption that a well-paying job will be waiting for you at the other end.

The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences has some $60,000 burning a hole in its collective pocket.  The fine people in the Dean’s Office are looking to give this money away to eligible students in SBS.

For more info, visit the SBS Undergraduate Scholarship page or attend the Scholarship Workshop on Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 5:30 p.m., at John Adams, Room 508.

Go get the money — it’s just waiting for you to apply!

Yet another article, this time in the New York Times, telling you what you should already know if you’re a regular reader of this blog: law school is expensive and law jobs are not as plentiful as they once were. Do your homework before you take the plunge. From the article:

Instead of overhauling the rankings, some professors say, the solution may be to get law schools and the bar association out of the stat-collection business. Steven Greenberger of DePaul recommends a mandatory warning — a bit like the labels on cigarette packs — that every student taking the LSAT, the prelaw standardized test, must read.

“Something like ‘Law school tuition is expensive and here is what the actual cost will be, the job market is uncertain and you should carefully consider whether you want to pursue this degree,’ ” he says. “And it should be made absolutely clear to students, that if they sign up for X amount of debt, their monthly nut will be X in three years.”

First one is tomorrow, Wednesday, December 8th at 4:30.

From the good folks at Career Services:

Are you a student graduating this December? Are you in search of a job? Then come to this workshop in 508 Goodell. Career Advisor, Caroline Gould, will go over job searching techniques that will help you find the right job for you. This workshop will also be offered on Dec 9th at 1pm with advisor Tommie Joyner; Dec 14th at 2:30pm with advisor Mary Ellen Liseno. All in 508 Goodell.

From the office of the Dean for the College of Social and Behavioral Studies:

1. Scholarships for spring semester study abroad. We will be making approximately 20 scholarships of $1,000 to students who are doing study abroad programs during the spring semester.
Application and information can be found here.

2. The dean is asking faculty to nominate students to serve on the SBS Student Advisory Council (students must also complete an application). Student members will meet with the dean to discuss issues issues of academic and campus life and serve as hosts for visiting alumni and prospective students. Application and information can be found here.

Deadline for applications: Tuesday, November 23. The application process for each of these opportunities is competitive.

If your major is in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, it’s certainly worth a few minutes of your time to click through this link and check out all the scholarships that are available. CSBS will give out some $60,000 in scholarships this spring, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t get a piece of it. Applications for some of the scholarships are due this coming Thursday, March 11th. Others are due April 8th. Check ‘em out.

As expected, the economy is sending people out of the job market and into law and graduate school, in large numbers. Taking on significant debt is not in fact a good strategy for riding out a poor economy, especially given the uncertainty of any commensurate pay-off, but that doesn’t seem to be slowing down the rush to law school:

Officials at many law schools reported substantial increases in applications over last year. Washington University in St. Louis has had a 19 percent year-to-date increase in applications to its college of law. At the University of San Francisco School of Law, applications are up 35 percent over last year, and at the University of Iowa’s College of Law, applications are up 39 percent.

Some increases are more explicable than others. Applications to the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University have risen 54 percent this year, which may be related to its rise in the U.S. News & World Report rankings to 23 in 2009, from 36 the year before.

But at Cornell University’s Law School, whose ranking has remained relatively stable, applications are up 44 percent, and no one is quite sure of the reason for such a large increase.

Richard Geiger, dean of admissions, said: “I’m a little thrown off by the fact that our increase is much bigger than expected. There’s nothing big we’re doing to explain that kind of increase.”

What does this mean in real terms for those of you applying this year?  More competition and a tougher road to admission.  The number of seats available in law schools has not increased comparably, meaning more applicants are competing for the same number of spots.  The hard truth is that many of you should expect to see more rejections and wait-lists than you would have in prior years.  If you have not yet filed an application, and are therefore later in the admission cycle to begin with, you might want to (re)consider postponing your application for a year or two, until the admissions fever subsides (as it surely will).  At the very least, those of you are preparing to graduate in May should be pursuing a job search at the same time as you complete the application process.

This may be the one piece of advice I can’t repeat often enough: you should conduct a thorough, realistic cost/benefit analysis of whether law school is a good investment before you start laying down the big bucks.  A recent National Law Journal explored this issue at length (may require UMass login), and I strongly recommend reading the entire thing, but here’s one of the central points:

Even a committee of the American Bar Association has concluded that law school applicants need a dose of reality.

“Far too many law students expect that earning a law degree will solve their financial problems for life,” reads a recent message posted on the ABA’s Web site from the organization’s Commission on the Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Profession and Legal Needs. “In reality, however, attending law school can become a financial burden for law students who fail to consider carefully the financial implications of their decision.”

(Emphasis added.)

After you’ve read the narrative version,  then you can click over to watch the video version — produced by an anonymous blogger who blogs under the pseudonym Esq. Never — which exaggerates a little bit, and takes unnecessary pot shots at so-called “third tier” law schools.  It also assumes that the only reason that anyone goes to law school is to work in “BigLaw” — one of the super-large law firms based in New York, Boston or Washington (and I know that very few of the UMass applicants I see have set that as their goal).  But the underlying message is one to contemplate at length: a law school degree is no guarantee of financial stability.  In many cases, it represents a serious setback.